Sexual Confusion
by lovablegeek
Summary: [PreRENT] Mark has moved on. Benny's not so sure. MarkBenny. [One shot]


_He don't know what he wants  
But he's gonna get it_

Mark slid over the back of the couch, flopping down alongside Benny, who didn't look up from his notebook at first. "Hey, Benny, I'm gonna go out to a club tonight. D'you want to come with me?"

Benny frowned and looked up at his roommate with an expression more baffled than anything. "Why…?" he asked slowly. It wasn't entirely clear, either to himself or to Mark, whether the question was meant to ask why Mark was going to a club, or why Benny would have any interest whatsoever in going with him. He didn't have anything against spending time with Mark, of course, but the idea of going to a club just for the hell of it didn't particularly appeal to him.

Mark shrugged. "I need to find someone for that new film. We don't know anyone who's right for the part, so I figured I might as well go look."

A bemused smile crossed Benny's face momentarily as he leaned over to set down his notebook and pen on the coffee table. "So you're looking in a club?"

"It's as good as any place, right? Anyway, you're the one who wrote the screenplay when we don't know people we can coerce to act in it."

"Oh, so it's my fault?" Benny asked with a chuckle. "You were the one who asked me to write it."

"So?" Mark pulled his feet up on the couch and tilted his head to one side, studying Benny with an almost unnervingly intent look. Benny hated it when Mark looked at him like that—hadn't minded it so much when they were at college together, or in that short period after they moved into the loft and before they broke up, but since then it just seemed too much like Mark might see his thoughts, see all the things he would much rather Mark _never_ knew about. He glanced away from Mark's eyes quickly, and after a moment Mark said, "So? Do you want to come or not?"

Benny grimaced and shook his head. "I don't think so, Mark. You know I don't like going to clubs and that sort of thing… I'm just gonna stay here and write or something." He leaned over to pick up his notebook again, but stopped when Mark caught his eye with a frustrated, somewhat disappointed look.

"Come on, Benny. You never get out of the house anymore, and you've been writing for the past few days. You can take a break for tonight." Mark slid off the couch and walked across the room to pick up his coat from where it had earlier been draped over the back of a chair, pulling it on as he glanced over at Benny, his eyebrows raised in one last wordless question. _Coming?_

Benny hesitated, mostly out of habit, but after a moment sighed and stood up to grab his own coat, taking his notebook with him. "Fine, I'm coming," he said, unnecessarily, for that much was self-evident, but Mark's smile, happy and sincere, served as some repayment for the effort.

_Maybe he'll fall in love  
Right—then live to regret it_

Once at the club, however, Benny started to wonder once more why he bothered. He'd never been particularly sociable. Open with his friends, yes, but places like this? No. He sat at the bar with a beer resting beside him, mostly untouched, and most of his attention on his notebook. Mark had probably anticipated that anyway—when Benny said he'd go somewhere with Mark, it generally meant that he'd be physically present, but would spend most of the time keeping to himself and writing, or trying to, not socializing or whatever else. In any case, Mark was elsewhere just then, talking to people, trying to find someone willing to act as the lead in his newest film with minimal pay—or, more likely, no pay at all.

Benny set his pen down beside his notebook—he'd been staring at a blank page for the past twenty minutes, the noise and atmosphere of the club conspiring to make him completely unable to focus on writing much of anything at the moment—and glanced up, scanning the room for Mark. It wasn't easy to find him, in the crowd, but before long he caught sight of him, carefully making his way across the floor and looking quietly determined, though God knew just what it was he was so determined about.

Benny found his eyes lingering on Mark, without really noticing it, following his movements with a quietly observant gaze, watching him from a distance as he so rarely could up close without soon flushing and looking away. The gold-blond hair, ragged and choppy, the result of Mark more often than not cutting it himself rather than spending the money needed for food and rent to get a _real_ haircut. The way he looked out from behind his glasses with blue eyes as focused as laser beams, the way he'd fix his attention on something and just _watch_ it as if trying to discern every detail and fix it in his memory. The occasional smile, quick and fleeting and barely-there but wonderfully welcome to see…

Realizing what he was doing, Benny shook his head and tore his eyes away, turning back to focus on his notebook once more. Stupid, being so attached to his old college boyfriend when Mark had so clearly moved on, his friend and nothing more. Still, the knowledge that Mark had moved on did nothing to offset the longing, the wish that _just maybe_, one day… Again, stupid. Real life didn't work out like his screenplays, and Mark wouldn't come back to him.

Benny decided abruptly, as he picked up his pen and absently drew a spiral in the margin of his notebook, that he wasn't particularly fond of real life.

_The devil is painted like the prettiest girl  
As he moves across the floor, the colors swirl_

When he looked up again after some time, searching for Mark, Benny caught sight of him speaking animatedly to someone Benny didn't recognize—a young man, maybe a little older than Mark. Spiked, bleached blond hair, mascara, a tattoo of a Celtic knot on his bare arm, and a confident, almost _cocky_ smile that irritated Benny just watching him from a distance like this. With the noise from the club, Benny couldn't hear what they were talking about—they were halfway across the room anyway—but Mark was talking animatedly, gesticulating apparently without noticing it, as he always did, his gestures both broad and quick, and his smile was almost a match for the other man's. Mark seemed to brighten in his presence, as if the other man were a source of light, and Mark a mirror that reflected it back, even shone himself in response.

Jealousy flared in Benny's chest. He couldn't remember the last time Mark had smiled at _him_ like that, a real, full smile instead of the quick, fleeting thing he gave him so often lately. The last time Mark had looked that bright and excited and vibrant when talking to _him_. A damn long time ago, half a year at least, and the sight of Mark opening up to this _stranger_ made something tighten in Benny's chest, a sharp knife of envy twisting inside him. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair, and… he couldn't sit here and watch it.

Benny grimaced and picked up his notebook, shoving himself away from the bar with a disgusted sigh and stalking out of the club without bothering to grab Mark and tell him he was going home. Mark would doubtless figure it out on his own anyway, if he even bothered to notice that Benny was gone at all. Once outside, out of the warm air of the club, Benny pulled his jacket on and tucked his notebook under his arm, shoving his hands deep into his pockets and bowing his head as he hurried down the street back to the loft in the chilly autumn air.

_The sun begins to rise in this garret in the bohemian quarter  
And with it our leading lady, still wearing last night's face_

Mark didn't come home that night, and Benny stubbornly put it out of his mind, spent a couple hours attempting to write something and failing miserably before finally going to bed. By the time Mark _did_ come home, it was mid-morning.

Benny stood in the kitchen pouring himself a cup of coffee when the door of the loft slid open and Mark walked in, still in the rumpled clothes he'd been wearing last night. Mark slid the door shut behind him and gave Benny one of those quick, fleeting smiles that didn't quite touch his eyes. Benny just gave him a quick nod of acknowledgement and took his coffee, pulling up a chair at the table and flopping down into it with a heavy sigh. He tried not to look up as Mark walked across the room to pour himself some coffee as well, tried not to notice the abstracted, pleased smile on Mark's face, the inexplicable and far too pleased glow that seemed to shine from him as it had last night. It was hard not to notice, though, and hard not to let it grate on his nerves.

At last, Benny asked in a light tone—forcedly so, though Mark didn't seem to notice—"So where were you last night?"

Mark's faint smile flashed momentarily into a grin, and he slid into the chair beside Benny. "With Roger," he said, cradling his coffee mug in both hands, lacing his fingers together and staring quietly into his coffee with that same abstracted expression. "I met him at the club. He's a musician."

There was a trace of starstruck awe and quiet admiration in his tone that made Benny's stomach churn with jealousy and a very definite resentment. He tightened his grip on his own coffee mug until his fingers whitened a little. He knew he ought to say something, ask about this Roger-person, at least pretend to have an interest in the conversation, but he couldn't bring himself to. Couldn't bring himself to say more than "Oh," and stare down at his coffee mug and clench his jaw and somehow pretend that he didn't care and that it didn't matter…

Benny knew he wasn't fooling anyone.


End file.
